As the story begins, we meet Olivia. A junior in high school (I had to look that up because our school years in the UK don’t quite tally with the US; she’s sixteen/seventeen years old), Olivia has many interests, including writing fan-fiction, photography and music. She has trouble interpreting other people’s feelings sometimes and, I suspect, doesn’t quite follow some social cues.
Olivia is sleeping with an actress while toying with the prospect of a sexual relationship with her teacher, Ben. I’ll admit - I struggled with this. I don’t know what would lead an actress or a teacher (someone whose public standing, reputation, and career would surely suffer if anyone suspected) into a relationship with a teenager. I did wonder, briefly, if the whole relationship might just be wishful on the part of our MC, that perhaps she’d fantasised the whole thing but as Ben insisted on keeping a professional distance, while sighing and struggling and letting Olivia sit on his lap, I couldn’t help but feel - a bit sick, actually.
There’s every possibility that I’m just too old to like this sort of story these days. As I get closer to forty, I perhaps have a tendency to put myself in the position of teacher/parent person, and therefore, really can’t deal with figures of authority, in my opinion, taking advantage of the naive, jejune and hopeful.
The writing is okay, although there are a fair few instances of unnecessary capitalisation, missing apostrophes, missing question marks, a general mixing up of prepositions ('on' for ‘over', ‘after' and ‘to') and the use of ‘squat’ and ‘rest’ as the past tense.
“‘Yeah,’ I sighed, dropping his hand down onto the side of my thigh. It rest there a few moments. The car was silent. And more intense than it usually was.”
19% in, Chapter 3, Before by Emma Chamberlain and Blythe Stone
“Ben moved closer and squat down behind me, pulling me to fall back onto his body so he could hug me and hold me close.”
42%, Chapter 8, Before by Emma Chamberlain and Blythe Stone
Sorry. Not for me.